


As Long As I'm Breathing Tomorrow

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1961832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“One of you is coming home,” Levi announces, his tone somewhere between conversational and authoritative.</p>
<p>Bizarrely, in that moment, Petra believes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Long As I'm Breathing Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> So I totally failed at keeping up with Rivetra Week, but I did write SOMETHING, so, yeah! Posting stuff!

Petra Ral is 18 when her name is called, but she looks younger as she numbly makes her way up onto the stage. She’s a small girl, and it’s raining on the day of the reaping, so she’s wearing her father’s old coat when she steps forward. It reaches halfway down to her knees and makes her look tiny.

Petra doesn’t hear the rest of the ceremony. She also does not cry, but the boy who is called after her does. Dimly, the part of Petra’s brain that is still functioning recognizes him. Oluo, he’s in her year at school.

Saying goodbye to her father feels unreal. She clings to him for as long as they’ll let her, soaking up the smell of home for what might be the last time. She’s sure she’s going to die.

*

On the train, Petra meets Levi for the first time. She’s too young to remember his victory, as he’s 11 years older than her and was only 14 when he was reaped.

He sips expensive Capitol tea and doesn’t even acknowledge their escort, watching Petra and Oluo instead. Petra watches him in return, ignoring the food. Oluo isn’t eating either, but only because he’s been sniffling since they got onto the train. The only person Petra’s cried in front of so far is her father; she wishes she could say it was because she’s trying not to seem weak. Really, she just hasn’t fully processed that this is _real_.

“One of you is coming home,” Levi announces, his tone somewhere between conversational and authoritative.

Bizarrely, in that moment, Petra believes him.

*

Petra and Oluo watch all the footage of Levi’s hunger games that they can get their hands on. Before too long, it feels less like they’re trying to learn tips and more like they’re just in _awe_.

The 14-year-old Levi on the screen beheads three people twice his size with a machete. He makes a face at the viscera and blood on the blades, and takes the time to wipe them on his victims’ clothing before taking their food with him.

His style is brutal, efficient, and remorseless, but Petra picks up on the little details better than Oluo. Levi doesn’t kill anyone younger than him throughout the entire games; she looks up more footage and is almost positive he ignores a 12-year-old passing on the third day. He never leaves a trail. He sleeps at weird times of the day.

If Petra can pull off anything even remotely like what her mentor did, she might have a chance after all.

*

Levi _loathes_ the dress-up parts of the proceedings. Petra does well with it, talking about wanting to get married someday during her interview and praising the Capitol tea. But she can see why he hates it; the whole thing is bubblegum sweet and glitzy, and she has the mental image of a smaller Levi with blood still flowing from a shoulder wound in the back of her head the whole time.

This might be the most disturbing part of the whole event.

Oluo bites his tongue during his interview, and Petra thinks Levi might be _inventing_ swear words to respond to that.

*

Petra kills someone less than 10 minutes into her games. She runs away from the cornucopia and it’s bloodbath, but someone follows her. He’s bigger than her, _a lot_ bigger, and he grabs her when he catches her. He has his hands around her throat, but Petra doesn’t need to breathe to jam her thumbs into his eyes. The blood drips from her fingers when he lets her go, staggering backwards in pain, and she kicks his legs out from underneath him.

She stomps on his windpipe until he stops screaming, and she doesn’t realize he’s dead until the cannon goes off.

She doesn’t have time to process what she’s just done. She keeps running.

*

By the end of the fourth day, Petra has a bruised neck, at least one broken rib, tension headaches, and Oluo watching her back. She’s barely eaten or slept, but she’s comforted by having someone else on her side.

On the fifth day, Petra gets shoved into a tree and breaks her collarbone. Oluo loses focus on the fight when she screams.

Petra is alone on the morning of the sixth day. 

*

Afterwards, Petra will think of it less as _winning_ her hunger games and more as _surviving_ them. When it’s down to two people, Petra’s opponent is a 16-year-old girl with an arm she’s cradling to her side. Levi tells her, afterwards, that it was broken.

Petra isn’t even the one who kills her. It’s one of the mutts who does it, a huge, humanoid creature that chases the two girls through the woods. It bites Petra’s only surviving competition in half.

Petra feels just as numb on the way out of the arena as she did on the way onto the stage on the day of her reaping.

*

They patch her up and parade her around, but Petra barely remembers any of it. She isn’t sure if it’s because of the painkillers they have her on, or if she just can’t handle going back to this after _killing_ people. The flurry of activity doesn’t help her process anything that’s happened over the past weeks.

On the train ride home, Levi sits with her in silence. Petra drinks tea with hands that aren’t as shaky as she thinks they should be.

When she falls asleep on his shoulder, he lets her stay there.

*

On the morning of the next reaping, a year after she walked through the rain with white noise in her ears, Petra wakes up in Levi’s bed. He’s still asleep; the sun is barely coming up. She slips on the overly luxurious bathrobe and tiptoes downstairs.

In the silence of 6am in a neighborhood where nobody lives, Petra makes tea and eggs on toast. She eats quietly with the man who taught her to kill at a table big enough to hold 20 people, then leaves to visit her father at the mansion that people keep telling her is something she owns.

She wears a silk dress while she sits next to Levi on the stage and doesn’t reach out to him for comfort. She presses her fingers into the hickey underneath the collar of her dress instead, right where the bone had once been broken. She is deliriously grateful that Levi had indulged her when she asked him to give it to her.

Eren Yeager volunteers for Armin Arlert.

Mikasa Ackerman follows her brother onto the stage.

Petra pushes on the bruise so hard the joints in her fingers ache.


End file.
